American Video Entertainment Inc.

Overview

AVE was founded as a spin-off company for semiconductor (ROM) manufacturer Macronix. Its goal was to act as a publishing house for third-party (unlicensed) titles for Nintendo's NES system. Macronix had been denied contracts for memory chips for Nintendo and had developed a chip called NINA to circumvent Nintendo's lock-out circuit in the NES. NINA was offered to unlicensed developers who could then publish their games through AVE, ultimately giving Macronix the ROM sales it had been denied by Nintendo themselves.